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David Reich - How One Small Tribe Conquered the World 70,000 Years Ago
Dwarkesh Podcast
Genetic and Cultural Persistence in Ancient India
The genetic landscape of modern South Asia exhibits a significant mixture of ancestries, primarily between ancestral North Indians and ancestral South Indians. This mixture commenced around 3,800 years ago with the declining Harappan civilization, where three distinct ancestral populations—local hunter-gatherers, early farming groups, and steppe pastoralists—came together. Over time, this mixing led to the formation of a stable gradient of genetic ancestry, akin to what is observed in African-American populations, yet it froze approximately two to three thousand years ago due to profound cultural changes, notably the establishment of the caste system. This cultural shift not only halted further mixing among different groups but also solidified social stratification, evidenced in early texts like the Rig Veda. Thus, the remarkable constancy of cultural elements such as caste and Hindu mythology over millennia can be attributed to this genetic mixture followed by cultural entrenchment, preserving these identities with high fidelity despite the absence of writing for much of that period.
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